Announcing ‘Public Study,’ a fall course from METRO’s Cross-Reference Coalition
We’re thrilled to share the Call for Applications for the next course from the Cross-Reference Coalition: an interdisciplinary community learning project from the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO).
The program launched in 2025 with courses on The Misfit and Search & Discovery, which you can explore via our newly-launched website, crc.metro.org, and we now invite you to join us for our third course in Fall 2026!
Course Description: Public Study
As institutional higher education faces proliferating threats, and as formal learning becomes ever-more instrumental and ever-less convivial, we’ve observed the propagation of alternative schools, study groups, and intentional learning communities. These collectives offer opportunities for liberatory, mutualistic education; for acknowledging the world’s brokenness and imagining its repair or reinvention. This recent activity builds on a long and multifarious legacy of para- or anti-institutional schools. Our Fall 2026 CRC course, “Public Study,” will examine the past, present, and future of popular, alternative, and radical education — particularly as they shape the intellectual, political, and cultural landscape of New York City; and as they’ve intersected with established cultural heritage and educational institutions. We’ll index local resources and address the roles that libraries and archives — both formal and informal — have played, do play, and could play within this pedagogical ecology.
In the months following our final session we’ll work together on a collaborative project — one shaped by our course theme; by our communities’ needs; and by your interests, skills, and bandwidth. We’ll consider potential formats: a field guide, atlas, or card catalog of local experimental schools; a speculative curriculum; or some other pedagogical form. From January through June, we’ll meet periodically — individually and as a collective — to plan, refine, produce, and release our project.
When: Wednesdays from September 23rd—December 9, 2026 (with breaks on October 28 and November 25), 3:30pm – 6:00pm
Where: mainly in-person at sites across New York City
Instructor: Dr. Shannon Mattern, METRO’s Director of Creative Research and the 2025 Kluge Chair of Modern Culture at the Library of Congress.
Cost: $125 with discounted METRO member and solidarity rates
To learn more, check out the call for applications or attend the information session on Monday, July 27th, 12:00 pm ET.
Applications will be accepted through Friday, August 7th, 2026. Apply here!